Shatter
by Bellicose Blue
Summary: The Capitol is a place half-imagined, bursts of color without cause or coordination. It looks like a fantasy, a fairytale, someplace conjured in a dream. It tastes of stardust and salt and she shivers, licks her lips.


Cashmere looks in the mirror and sees a young girl, hair in a single golden braid that curls over her dress, a beautiful drape of silk that brings out the green in her eyes. It's the nicest dress she's ever worn, and she wears it just once a year, on Reaping days. Once she turns eighteen, she'll pack away her dress and save it for her daughter, the same way this dress has been passed down for generations.

But for now she wears it and admires her reflection, preens a little. She's only fourteen, but she's already stunning, tall and lean with bright features. Her mother's told her she'll make a prized wife some day to someone important, someone powerful. She thinks she'd like to be powerful.

Her brother Gloss emerges from the kitchen, a tight grin on his face. While Cashmere's all soft curves, he's harsh angles and muscles that have made many a boy think twice about pursuing her. Not that anything stops the onslaught of admirers, the roses and poems she finds slipped into her locker at school.

There's no school today. Gloss walks with her through the main road to the square, where they both sign in. Their parents will be there later; they're busy enjoying a drink with the mayor and his wife. Gloss stands in the row designated for sixteens, and Cashmere finds his dark head of hair from where she stands two rows back.

The Reaping begins, and Cashmere barely has time to be relieved her single slip of paper was passed over before the boy's name is called out and Gloss volunteers. She smiles eagerly and claps as he shakes hands with the female tribute, pride all she can feel.

She visits him later, lowers herself to one of the velvet chairs and they discuss his strategies, his sponsors until a Peacekeeper arrives to take her back. She kisses him on the cheek, dimples at the man in white, and leaves.

They never mention what will happen if he dies.

* * *

Cashmere looks at her reflection in the emptiness of the screen just before it activates. She's still young, still beautiful, lounging on the leather couch in the living room. She adjusts herself before her mother can scold her for sloppiness, legs crossed at the ankle and back straight.

She's transfixed by the screen. She watches as her brother enters the Capitol on the chariot. Silver is the color this year, and it looks striking on him, washes out the girl beside him. She listens to the commentators rave about him, how handsome and strong he looks, how the crowd chants his name.

The Capitol is a place half-imagined, bursts of color without cause or coordination. It looks like a fantasy, a fairytale, someplace conjured in a dream. It tastes of stardust and salt and she shivers, licks her lips.

She watches days later as he is interviewed, charming and confident and just the slightest bit sultry. He's radiant among all the other tributes, easily upstaging them all, and she observes, keeps her grin to herself.

* * *

Cashmere looks in the mirror and sees a young girl, pretty and proper and polite, golden curls twining down her dress. If her emerald eyes are a bit colder, less exposed than they ought to be for a girl of her age, well, no one's the wiser.

She dimples and flirts her way through her interview, knowing her job is to charm wavering sponsors into agreeing to help her brother. Gloss's in the final eight now, and she pulls on every resource she has, every last reserve of charisma she can dredge up. When the interviewer asks how she feels Gloss's odds are, she beams and tells the camera she knows he can do it. She blows the audience a kiss as the interview closes.

When they're gone, she sits in silence for a few minutes before she turns back on the screen. Gloss is still prominently featured, compared to the other dull tributes. Right now he slashes his knife into one's neck and the cannon fires a few seconds later. His kill count flashes on the screen, a high number, and she beams.

* * *

Cashmere looks in the mirror a few weeks later, face powdered smooth and eyes dark. It's time for his victory celebration, and she's been specially invited to the Capitol. She's wearing some sort of gown she'd never dreamed could exist, as light as a cloud and glistening satin against her skin. She draws eyes, turns heads as she glides through the party, seeking out one person.

She finds him a few minutes later, standing with his mentors and laughing at a joke a wealthy Capitolite has just finished telling. She smiles at him, beams really, and he takes her hand and pulls her forward to introduce her.

She meets many people that night, nobles who admire her beauty, linger on her curves. She flirts and charms and laughs and occasionally gets pulled aside to dance with one of the many painted men. She's illuminating the dark room, commanding everyone's attention, and she thinks, _this is what power is._

Her lipstick is pink and shimmers like crushed diamonds when she smiles.

* * *

It's nearly a year later when she looks in the mirror. She's a colder, sleeker beauty, muscles honed by the countless hours spent training with Gloss. This is her year. If she waits any longer, she'll surely be Reaped. It's no coincidence so many siblings and children of Victors get Reaped, that much she's certain of. The odds are stacked against it.

She has the upper hand this year when she volunteers, singing out her name and beaming at the male tribute as he crushes her hand with his sweaty palm.

The mentors ignore him, hone in on her. They quiz her on her talents, weaknesses, angles, and finally nod, satisfied. She doesn't tell them everything, of course. She hides her skill with a knife, the way her sweetness is a façade. The more they know of her, the more they can blackmail her with when she wins.

And she will win, of that she is certain. She's attracted enough attention to gain wealthy sponsors. She's young, only fifteen to Gloss's then-sixteen, but she's clearly strong enough to more than hold her own. Gloss had not been careful when he trained with her, that excruciating year of building endurance and strength after he won and they decided she would volunteer. He loves her, she knows, just as she loves him, but he's ruthlessly pragmatic in a way their mother never could be.

If she dies, he will let her go.

Cashmere is beautiful in the Capitol, stuns on her chariot, drawing an even louder roar than Gloss had. She glistens in her interview, draped in a sheer red cloth that reveals every contour of her body beneath. She doesn't care. She'll do whatever it takes to win, even seduce the Capitol, should it come to that. She dazzles the audience, leaves them open-mouthed as she obliterates every tribute after her.

* * *

The last time she'll look in a mirror for weeks is just before she's about to go into the arena. There's excitement in her eyes, her hair twisted back and pinned so tendrils curl around her shoulders. She looks young, innocent, even, but her eyes are ancient fire. She steps into the chute and feels almost giddy as it takes her up.

The bloodbath is a soothing melody, her knife singing as it slices through flesh and the cannon the beat of her heart. Killing is easy. She holds no compassion, only contempt for the children who sob, who plead, who expect her to be as merciful as she appears. The first night ends with her scattering the Career pack, some dead, some fleeing before her. That's the only way she could've died, outnumbered by a circle of wolves who had finally decided she was a threat.

Now she'll definitely win.

Food is easy to come by. Sponsors send her gifts of meals- noodles in a savory sauce, turkey and buttered peas, slices of toast when she mentions she could go for a snack. They send her weapons, too. She lines her belt with knives and smolders at the sky.

When the final cannon sounds and her last opponent falls, she's tired. She lets the hovercraft lift her up and away from the arena, a smile pasted on her face.

Recuperation is easy for her. She hadn't lost nearly as much weight as she was projected to, and her mentors successfully keep her from receiving the kind of alterations that the Capitol always suggests. A week or so passes, and then she's released for the recap.

She is just as charming and sultry as ever, and if there's a jagged edge to her smile, no one notices. The after-party is not nearly as exciting as the previous year's, but she flirts her way through it until the end of the night, when one of her mentors introduces her to an older man.

He is one of her main sponsors, and he wants a reward for all that he invested in her. He takes her to his mansion at the closing of the party. She leaves the next morning with a ruby on her throat and water glistening in her eyes.

Beauty was her lure and her survival, and now it has come to extract its fee from her, to take it from her flesh. Desire is its own branch of magic: it always has a price.

Gloss's imposing figure can't keep her suitors away this time. She hears him arguing with their escort one night, suspects it's about the formal invitation she'd received that afternoon, the new sapphire tied about her throat. She glides to the door, knocks, and there's silence.

If there's sorrow, regret in his eyes, it's quickly masked as Gloss pulls her into a hug, murmuring something that might be an apology in her ear.

He doesn't know that she draws her power from the lingering glances of the Capitol men, the favors they promise her in exchange for an afternoon or an evening, the ice that trickles down her spine when she's invited to another extravagant party. It's not the kind of power she'd dreamed of, but it's enough.

She's happy now, she tells him, and when she smiles, it doesn't even feel fake.

* * *

The Capitol tastes of stardust (ashes) and salt (blood) and she shivers, licks her lips.

Somewhere, a mirror shatters.


End file.
